New Greatest Anime Of All Time Chosen By Fans

It’s not easy for an anime to beat out Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood for any duration on My Anime List’s website. A few anime have made it to the top temporarily, but Brotherhood often makes its way back to the number one position soon enough.

That may not be the case with Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End. At the end of its airing, it sat at an average score of 9.18, whereas Brotherhood only had a 9.09 on the list.

Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End is a fantasy anime that follows the life of an elf named Frieren. As the name suggests, the story doesn’t detail her adventures defeating the evil Demon King, but the story afterward.

Most of her party was human, with human life-spans. In comparison, Frieren can live for thousands of years. What seems like only a short time to her is almost an entire life for a human.

Frieren is forced to confront the mortality of humans and learn what loss and regret are as she travels through places full of memories.

The anime was developed by the popular anime studio, Studio Madhouse (Death Note, Overlord). It was based on a manga of the same name written by Kanehito Yamada and illustrated by Tsukasa Abe.

Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End has a lot going for it. The pacing, animation, and characters are all tied together to tell the story just right. In a period of fast-paced Isekai animes, this slower story is a breath of fresh air.

The animation is something fans notice right away. Instead of bright bold colors that immediately draw attention and sharp animation that looks crisp and new, the show took a different path. Instead, it fully embraces the fact that it’s art, and goes for more of an illustration style.

This fits the story well, as it’s not an action-heavy or fast-paced show. There are moments when there is action, comedy, and drama, but the story is more about characters living their lives.

The pacing ties into this theme and enforces the point. The show is in no rush. Like the main character, Frieren, the show doesn’t bother to skip right to the next adventure.

Though Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End focuses on all parts of the adventure, both the slow and the fast moments, it isn’t boring. Those moments between the next fights are used to develop all of the characters, including those long gone in the story.

One of the other main reasons the show is so amazing is that it subverts expectations. It takes popular tropes and twists them so the story is still about our main characters and their growth.

The villains that should be focused on are nothing more than a way to show how the characters have gotten over their fears and grown. A moment of sickness is a way to bond and not another adventure looking for missing items.

Mix all of that with the main themes of loss, regret, and growth, as well as strong female and elderly representation, and you have just scratched the surface of what makes Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End memorable.

If you want to try out this new number-one anime for yourself, all 28 episodes of Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End are available on Crunchyroll.